Balancing risk and opportunity: Digital transformation, cybersecurity investments, and export performance in low-tech firms

Abstract

This study examines whether investments in digital technologies raise export sales among low-tech firms, and whether cybersecurity spending conditions these returns. Reading the Resource-Based View through resource orchestration, we frame digital technologies as enabling resources and cybersecurity as a protective commitment securing their value but competing for the investment budget under scarcity. This competition is sharper in low-tech firms, with thinner slack. Using Bank of Italy data (2016–2023), we find digital investment positively associated with export sales where cybersecurity spending is absent. This association is negative in the highest protective-spending brackets, and a specification imposing no functional form locates the reversal at the top of the distribution. The pattern is clearer among SMEs and manufacturing firms; among larger firms, digital investment shows no association with exports, while protective spending is associated with higher export volume. This is a cyber-risk paradox: under scarcity, protection substitutes for, rather than complements, digital expansion.